And when the opposition fights dirty, it provides the government with justification for cracking down.
This is what happened in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez.
Although the first few years of Chávez's presidency were dem-ocratic, opponents found his populist discourse terrifying.
Fearful that Chávez would steer Venezuela toward Cuban-style socialism, they tried to remove him preemptively-and by any means necessary. In April 2002, opposition leaders backed a military coup, which not only failed but destroyed their image as democrats. Undeterred, the opposition launched an indefinite general strike in December 2002, seeking to shut the country down until Chávez resigned. The strike lasted two months, costing Venezuela an estimated $4.5 billion and ultimately failing. Anti-Chávez forces then boycotted the 2005 legislative elections, but this did little more than allow the chavistas to gain total control over Congress. All three strategies had back-fired. Not only did they fail to knock Chávez out, but they eroded the opposition's public support, allowed Chávez to tag his rivals as antidemocratic, and handed the government an excuse to purge the military, the police, and the courts, arrest or exile dissidents, and close independent media outlets. Weakened and discredited, the opposition could not stop the regime's subsequent descent into authoritarianism.
Well, that is disheartening. There is no way we could get a general strike together, but it’s one of the few forms of force that the left has.